Santa Rosa man retraces Red Baron’s WWI footsteps

Decades before he took to the skies, Wade Eakle of Santa Rosa had developed an enduring love affair with flying, especially the dramatic adventures and history of World War I fighter pilots.

As a child growing up in Salt Lake City during the mid-1960s, Eakle marveled at stories of Baron Manfred von Richthofen, famously known as the Red Baron, who cut through the clouds in his German Fokker triplane downing British Sopwith Camels with deadly skill.

He was stunned by the visual affects and drama of “The Blue Max,” the 1966 epic about a World War I pilot, and when Charles M. Schulz put an aviator helmet and goggles on Snoopy, Eakle was hooked.

He buried his nose in books and magazines articles about the subject and became an amateur World War I aviation historian while pursuing a career in wildlife ecology. Not surprisingly, he also studied eagles and developed an interest in falconry.

“Since I was a kid growing up, I’ve had a lifelong interest in aviation and airplanes, probably related to my lifelong interest in birds,” said Eakle. He now works as an ecologist for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

To mark the 100th anniversary of the Western Front, the main theater of World War I from 1914 to 1918, Eakle and a small group of historians traveled to Europe in May to commemorate the period’s most notable air battles. They planned to visit nine major sites, from Flanders in Belgium to Verdun in France.

It’s not the first time Eakle has traveled to Europe in search of historical tidbits about the Red Baron and other World War I aviation heroes, but it is his first time to tour Belgium and France.

“My family is getting sick of this stuff,” he said. “I tell them this is my ‘in the footsteps of the Red Baron’ tour.”

Flying fields

The group hit a number of areas from which the Red Baron flew - the flying fields that actually were big farm fields, and the places where his victims are buried. He also visited the site of the Red Baron’s final flight, where he was killed and buried. The flying ace was shot down in France along the Somme River, probably hit by Australian soldiers on the ground.

“It’s probably one of the most controversial aspects of World War I aviation, who actually shot down the Red Baron,” Eakle said. “He was chasing a Sopwith Camel, got behind the lines over Australians, and there were a couple of Australian machine gunners who could have got him.

“But every Australian soldier who was there probably took a pot shot at him. Back then, both the rifles they were using and the machine guns used the same caliber of bullets.”

The most respected account gives credit to one of two Australian machine gunners who were in the right position, Eakle said. It took one bullet, a “lucky shot that essentially went through his chest. He was flying relatively low, executed an emergency landing and almost immediately passed away.”

Eakle has published several articles about World War I aviation in “Over the Front,” a quarterly publication by the League of World War One Aviation Historians, of which Eakle is founding member. One article is an account of the final resting places of some of the Great War’s finest fighter pilots, including the Red Baron. Another is a historical review of Snoopy as the World War I Flying Ace.

Snoopy’s role

In the latter article, published in 2007, Eakle writes: “Not only was Snoopy just about everyone’s favorite flying beagle for most of the last half of the twentieth century, but he also helped introduce the fascinating history of WWI aviation to millions of men, women and children who otherwise would never have even heard of a Sopwith Camel.”

Schulz had already been living in Sonoma County for 12 years when Eakle moved with his family to Santa Rosa in 1970. Eakle, now 57, was part of the first class to finish Comstock Junior High School and later attended Piner High School.

After a couple of years at Santa Rosa Junior College, he transferred to Humboldt State and graduated in 1982 with a bachelor’s degree in wildlife ecology.

For a time, his fascination with flight was satisfied by studying birds of prey, eagles and falcons. While Eakle was in college, his father obtained a pilot’s license.

About 10 years ago, Eakle was bitten by the same bug and started seriously thinking about what it would be like to soar through the skies. He took the pilot ground training course at Santa Rosa Junior College, flight training through North Coast Air at the Sonoma County Airport, and got his private pilot’s license in 2011. Although he hasn’t flown a biplane, riding in one at the Schellville Airport near Sonoma gave him a taste for what the Red Baron must have experienced.

“Flying in an open-cockpit biplane like the Boeing PT-13 Strearman, with the loud engine noise and rushing cold wind, does give you some sense of what the early (WWI) pilots faced, sans bullets,” he said.

Now that he also is airborne, Eakle logs about 100 hours a year and said he especially loves “flying over the spectacular and still largely rural landscapes of Sonoma County. It really gives you an appreciation for the natural beauty we still have here.”

You can reach Staff Writer Martin Espinoza at 521-5213 or martin.espinoza@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @renofish.